Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Volume 17, Number 1

Fall, 1986

MM. newsletter

q 7 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

Songs of the Spring Warblers

A new exhibit will open on March
24, 1987 which will provide an
opportunity for new birders to learn,
and seasoned birders to brush up on,
the distinguishing songs of the
warblers that arrive in New England
in the spring. The exhibit will feature
plates of the warblers in breeding
plumage by Allan Brooks and will
have a computerized recording sys-
tem which will allow the visitor to
hear the desired song.

Five warbler species drawn by Allan
Brooks from Portraits of New England
Birds, published by the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, 1932.

The exhibit will also include panels
describing various aspects of the
annual warbler phenomenon, such
as: an introduction to the history of
Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the local

haven for the spring migrants; cur-
rent theories on the mysterious
mechanisms of migration; and the
status of the southern end of the
migratory route, the endangered rain
forests of South America.

Special evening programs are
planned in April and May for the
Friends of the MCZ, the Friends of
Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and various
local bird organizations to coincide

with the annual local bird-watching ~

bonanza.

Invertebrate Department
Hosts First Open House

A series of twice-a-year behind-
the-scenes evenings hosted by the
various MCZ departments was
launched on October 28 with talks by
Professor Herbert W. Levi and
graduate students Leticia Aviles,
Wayne Maddison, and Jackie Palmer
and tours of the invertebrate collec-
tions by members of the department.
Friends of the MCZ joined MCZ staff
and students for the occasion.

Coral Reef Hall
Next-in-Line

for Renovation

The MCZ’s public exhibits are
undergoing a transformation. Now
that the main entrance hall, which
housed the spectacular Birds-in-Art
exhibit to celebrate Harvard's 350th
anniversary, has been renovated, the
next major effort will focus on the
Coral Reef Hall. Most of the exhibits
in that hall date from Alexander
Agassiz’ time and show the effects
of age. Some excellent temporary
exhibits were mounted by the Mala-
cological Society last year to coincide
with the First Day of Issue of a series
of stamps featuring shells. While the
model of the coral island of Bora Bora
will remain the central focus of the
room, new exhibits will include
panels on current ecological studies
on coral reef communities, a section
on SCUBA and snorkeling with

- world maps pinpointing the coral

reef areas, an underwater slide show,
and spectacular specimens from the
collections.

Birds-in-Art, September 4-26, was the first exhibit in the renovated main entrance

hall to the MCZ.

siete mC Fact
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Patterns of a Life in Science: Frank M. Carpenter

by Hilary Hopkins

Frank M. Carpenter, Professor
Emeritus of Zoology and Natural
History, and Honorary Curator of
Fossil Insects at the Museum of
Comparative Zoology, has been
what he himself describes as “one of
the lucky ones,” to have found a topic
of deep interest early, and to have
been able to follow this in work.

As we sat in his quiet office at the
MCZ, Professor Carpenter described
to me a remarkable series of expe-
riences in collegiality which he has
had during his 84 years. He is espe-
cially clear on one point: his father,
who was his first colleague, was
probably also the most important.

‘I was fortunate in having as a
father someone who was strongly
interested in natural history, in all
forms. My earliest recollection, in
4th or 5th grade, is of being with him
in the fields collecting butterflies. He
was not scientific, he just enjoyed
collecting these things, and rearing
them. My interest in insects very
much began with my father’s inter-
ests. I might mention that I had a
brother who got very much inter-
ested in the stars when he was in
grammar school, and my father used
to take him out at night. He helped
him make a little telescope, helping
him grind the lenses and so forth.
My brother became an astronomer
and director of one of the observa-
tories in the West.”’

A second significant colleague
came into Professor Carpenter’s life
at about this time, albeit a silent one
who spoke to his imagination
through the printed word and
through one special picture. He
explained, “One of the things I read
was a book by Samuel Scudder.
Scudder was a student of Louis
Agassiz, and he was one of the
founders of the Cambridge Ento-
mological Society. He wrote a book

Hilary Hopkins, a Friend of the MCZ
since 1981, is a science enthusiast and
educational consultant specializing in
gifted children. This article is the second
of two she has prepared for the MCZ
Newsletter.

for youngsters. I think that people
who go into natural science have an
obligation to write at least one book
that is aimed at the young people.”
Professor Carpenter continued,
“The book was called Frail Children
of the Air. | devoured that book! The
thing that startled me most was a
short section with some woodcuts on
fossil butterflies. The idea of a fossil
insect, to say nothing of fossil but-
terflies! There was a woodcut of this
thing, showing the wings spread
out, markings on them—it affected
me so much that I decided to myself
that I’d work on fossil insects.”

“All through school I was a loner,”’
Carpenter recalled. “I liked to go out
after school and collect butterflies
and my schoolmates thought I was
crazy.”’ But during his freshman year
in high school, a remarkable meeting
with a new colleague occurred. ‘“One
day the mailman came to the door
and asked my mother who it was that
got the mail on insects, so my mother
brought me to the door, and he said,
‘I’m Waldo Dodge and I collect bee-
tles. Would you like to go collecting
with me on the weekends?’ So from
that time on we would meet and go
out to collect.”

Several years later the young
Carpenter’s colleague Mr. Dodge
invited him toa meeting of the Cam-
bridge Entomological Club. “I was
astounded that there was any such

thing going on! At the end of the
meeting Mr. Dodge brought me up
to meet someone, and that was Pro-
fessor W.M. Wheeler, who was pro-
fessor of entomology at Harvard.”

‘Professor Wheeler said to me,
‘What insects are you interested in?’
And I said, ‘Fossil insects.’ He said,
‘Did you ever see any?’ When I said
no, he took me downstairs to his
office, and there were stacks of trays,
and in them were 6000 fossil ants,
and these were the first fossil insects
I ever saw.” As it turned out, these
same fossil ants became the subject
of Professor Carpenter’s doctoral
thesis.

From this wonderful moment on,
Carpenter determined to attend
Harvard and to work with Professor
Wheeler. This powerful dream came
true: within a few years, aftera stint
working asa drugstore clerk to earn
tuition, he did indeed find himself
at Harvard.

Enter—miraculously—the fossil
butterfly again. “I learned that Mr.
Scudder had left his collection of
fossil insects to Harvard. I went to
the director of the Museum and
asked if I could see some of the spec-
imens.”’ Professor Carpenter shook
his head in amazement over his
youthful bravery as he explained
how he convinced the director to let
him see the collection. ‘“He brought
me to the collection, and he opened
up a cabinet—”

At this point Professor Carpenter
asked me to wait a second, and he
went off around the corner of one of
the tall cabinets lining the walls of
his office. Upon returning, he said,
“The Museum director took out a
little brown box and he said, ‘How
about this one?’”’

Professor Carpenter opened the
sliding cover of a little wooden box
and there lay on the cotton within a
perfect image of that frail child of the
air of distant times, an elegant rev-
elation of forces guiding the shape of
life then as now. ‘‘As you might sur-
mise,” he said with feeling, “this was
the original specimen that Scudder
had shown in the book I read as a
child. I never expected to work
within 20 feet of that thing for the rest
of my life.”

(Continued on p.7)

Visitors
Itzhak Choshniak

Itzhak Choshniak, Professor of
Biology at the University of Tel-Aviv,
is spending his sabbatical year here
working with Professor C. Richard
Taylor on several research projects.
A specialist in comparative and
environmental physiology, Chosh-
niak is studying the effects of high
altitude on the blood flow to certain
muscles during exercise in llamas.
At the Concord Field Station he and
Taylor run llamas on a treadmill, and
also measure oxygen consumption
during exercise.

Choshniak’s most recent work in
Israel has focussed on desert adap-
tations in black Bedouin goats who
can survive for several days without
water and then restore their required
water intake in one drinking session.
Choshniak studied the kidney
response to such rapid water loading
which can equal as much as 30-40%
of the animal’s body weight. His
investigations showed that the water
is temporarily stored in a holding
chamber, the rumen, which is one of
the four chambers of the stomach,
and is then gradually released into
the more permeable parts of the
digestive tract and absorbed into
the body.

During his year here Choshniak is
also conducting the laboratory ses-
sions for Biology 21: The Structure and
Function of Vertebrates. Living at the
Concord Field Station apartment

with his wife and three children, all
the family members are enjoying
their first visit to the United States.

Two Visitors from
Flagstaff

Dr. G.E. (Ted) Goslow, Jr., Profes-
sor of Biology and Northern Arizona
University (Flagstaff) is spending his
sabbatical year at the MCZ together
with Post-doctoral Fellow Kenneth
P. Dial.

The visiting researchers are
investigating the mechanics of bird
flight with Professor Farish A. Jen-
kins, Jr. The year’s project is now
getting underway. By training a pair
of cooperative starlings to fly
through a wind-tunnel and filming
their movements using cine-x-ray,
the trio propose to analyze the
movements of the wing during flight
and monitor the activity of the mus-
cles that control the wing. Visitors to
next Spring’s Open House will have
an opportunity to see demonstra-
tions of this research.

Kenneth P. Dial (L) and G.E. (Ted)
Goslow, Jr.

Goslow and Dial are also assisting
Jenkins with the teaching of human
functional anatomy course at Har-
vard Medical School.

Eel Expert Joins Fish Department

Dr. David G. Smith arrived at the
MCZ in September to continue the
work on the larval fish collection,
which includes an extensive collec-
tion of eels, started under a grant
from the National Science Founda-
tion by the late Dr. Sally Richardson.
According to Karel Liem, Curator of
Ichthyology, “we are extremely lucky
to have Dave here since he is the
world’s leading expert on adult and

larval eels.” Smith, who received his
Ph.D. at the University of Miami and
previously worked at the University
of Texas Medical Branch in Galves-
ton, is slightly more modest about
his standing. Smith’s assessment:
“There are two of us eel experts in
the world and the other one is in New
Zealand.”

’ The total project is expected to take
two-and-a-half years to complete.

A larval fish, Southern Stargazer, Astroscopus y-graecum

Ecologist Steve Austad Joins Teaching Staff

An undergraduate degree in
English literature, with a special
emphasis on the Victorian novel, and
proficiency in lion-taming are not the
among usual prerequisites for
teaching ecology at Harvard. In
newly-appointed Assistant Professor
of Biology Steve Austad’s case, the
progression from magazine writer to
Hollywood lion-tamer/stunt-man to
teaching at Harvard was based ona
series of logical decisions.

After graduating in English from
UCLA, aspiring writer Austad
moved to Oregon to work ona mag-
azine. Austad’s good friend and
karate instructor in the area had two
pet lions and Austad, who had
always been an animal lover, spent
much of his spare time in the lions’
company. When a movie producer
friend hired the lions for stunt work,
Austad accompanied them to Hol-
lywood and ended up performing
stunts in a number of movies. His
last role was as a stand-in for the
“Bionic Woman” in a mauling scene.
“I had to shave my moustache for the
role,” Austad recalls. Although the
salary was extremely attractive,
Austad reckoned his life would be
short if he continued in this line of
work. He suffered common minor
injuries, was seriously injured once,
and on one occasion only escaped
death because the attacking lion
flung him just beyond the length of
his tether. As Austad tells it: “I found

myself lying there, surprised to be
alive, with the lion straining at his
leash a foot away from me.”

His experience: with the lions
inspired Austad to study biology
with the ultimate aim of conducting
research on lions in East Africa.
Having no previous science back-
ground, he enrolled in a few courses
at a California State University and
went on to enrollin a Ph.D. program
at Purdue. During the course of his
work he switched from lions to
smaller, more tractable research
animals including spiders, tropical
wrens, and opossums. He held post-
doctoral fellowships both at Purdue
and the University of New Mexico
prior to his present appointment.

Austad chooses research animals
that will most conveniently answer
the questions that interest him. He
favors setting up experimental con-
ditions in the field rather than in the
laboratory whenever possible. For
example, American opossums are
ideal subjects for his current research
on how animals age since they only
live for one year while housecats, of
comparable size, live for an average
of 12 years. In testing current theo-
ries, which mostly correlate aging
rate to reproductive effort, opossums
are especially convenient since,
being marsupials, the young develop
in an accessible pouch, providing an
ideal experimental opportunity to
manipulate reproductive effort. To
investigate the role of reproductive
investment favoring male versus
female offspring, he has found that
altering the physical condition of
opossum mothers alters the sex ratio
of their young. By radio-collaring his
subjects, following them to their
lairs, and leaving food outside,
Austad is able to correlate the rate of
offspring growth with food supply.

Married to a veterinarian, Aus-
tad’s private life also includes a heavy
emphasis on animals. The current
population at the Austad home
includes four dogs, two cats, several
parrots, and a nine-foot python.

Austad will start teaching Biology
19: Principles of Ecology next year. He
is enthusiastic about the “aura of
academic seriousness” he detects in
Harvard students and is recruiting

undergraduates to assist him in his
local field work.

Education Programs
Mark Tenth Anniversary

In September, 1976 the MCZ
launched a formal education pro-
gram for the Boston elementary
school students, funded by a grant
made available as part of the effort
to desegregate the city’s public
schools. The program continued
successfully for four years, entirely
funded by outside monies. As Boston
programs started to dwindle, the
MCZ's public education efforts were
redirected to concentrate on the
needs of our immediate neighbors in
the Cambridge public schools. The
present phase of the program,
started under the direction of
Museum Education Director Arlene
Nichols in 1982 and partially funded
by Harvard’s Office of Government
and Community Affairs, is now
supported by the Massachusetts
Council on the Arts and Humani-
ties, the Cambridge Public Schools,
local corporations and individual
benefactors.

Utilizing the exhibits and speci-
mens from the collections, the pro-
grams emphasize the development
of science thinking skills and the
process of science. A multidis-
ciplinary approach stresses the role
of science in all activities.

A recent development has been the
MCZ’s involvement in MITS (the
Massachusetts Institute for the
Teaching of Science) in collaboration
with six other Boston area science
institutions. At the first two-week
session for teachers in July, MCZ
ichthyologist Dr. Melanie L. J.
Stiassny discussed her research with
elementary school teachers. She has
subsequently been requested to
speak to classes at nine schools in
neighboring Arlington to help
inspire elementary school students
to pursue studies in the sciences.

Now generally recognized as one
of Harvard’s most valuable outreach
programs and_ enthusiastically
received by students, parents,
teachers, and administrators, the
continuation of these programs still
depends entirely upon the gener-
osity and commitment of loyal
Friends and supporters.

New Honorary Curator
Appointed by
MCZ Library

G. William Cottrell was appointed
Honorary Curator of the Ornithol-
ogical Collections in the MCZ
Library as of July 1, 1986. A reception
in his honor was held on July 22.
Cottrell’s relationship with MCZ
began in 1960 when he became an
Associate in Ornithology. He served
as one of the editors of the recently
completed 15-volume Checklist of the
Birds of the World. According to MCZ
Librarian Eva Jonas, Cottrell has
been a “great friend and regular user
of the MCZ Library,’” whose sug-
gestions initiating transfers from
other Harvard library collections
and whose frequent gifts have
greatly strengthened the Library’s
collections.

Informal Seminars at
the MCZ

The need for an exchange of ideas
between researchers is met in a
variety of seminars that are held
throughout the MCZ on more or less
regular schedules during the aca-
demic year. Attendance is open and
visitors often join faculty and stu-
dents at these informal sessions.
Following is a round-up of some of
the seminars currently being con-
ducted. Call the Public Programs
Office at 495-2463 for more detailed
information on any of the seminars.

The Systematics and Biogeogra-
phy Discussion group meets every
Wednesday at 4:00 PM in MCZ 202.
Currently organized by graduate
students Robert J. O’Hara and Jef-
frey Jensen, the format alternates
between prepared talks by members
of the MCZ community and beyond
and informal coffee hours. Botanists
from the Arnold Arboretum and the
Harvard University Herbaria are
frequent attendees at these sessions.
Speakers scheduled for this fall
include: R. J. O’Hara, Systematics as
the chronicle of evolution; P. F. Stevens,
Why characters, hence cladistics, aren’t/

At the reception on July 22 in the MCZ Library were (1. to r.) MCZ Director James
J. McCarthy, G. William Cottrell, University Librarian Sidney Verba, and Mrs.

Cottrell.

isn't for real; M. L. J. Stiassny, Ata-
visms and evolution; R. D. Turner,
Systematic problems in shipworms; F.
M. Carpenter, Geological record of
insects; W. Allmon, Litter frogs.

The Population Genetics group
holds lunchtime meetings every
Monday around the large table in the
department on the third floor of the
MCZ Labs. Organized this year by
graduate student Peg Reilly, topics
are not restricted to population
genetics but range widely over the
entire field. A random sampling of
the subjects of recent talks include
functional morphology, DNA
sequencing, biochemistry, function
of proteins, philosophical issues of
genetic engineering, mathematical
modeling, and topics in the history
of science.

The Fish Group meets every Fri-
day at 10:00 in MCZ 101 to discuss
topics in ichthyology. Staff members
and students are often joined by
visitors from other departments and
from outside of the museum.

Arachnology Seminars are con-
ducted on an occasional basis in the
Invertebrate Department on the first
floor of the MCZ. Typical speakers
include Professor Herbert W. Levi's

frequent visitors to the department.
Dr. Steven Austad, newly-arrived
faculty member in ecology, gave this
fall’s first seminar on his work on the
natural history of a group of Euro-
pean spiders. Visitors to other
departments of the MCZ often pres-
ent departmental seminars during
the course of their visit.

The OEB seminar, a more formal
departmental seminar currently
chaired by Professor P. B. Stevens,
is held across the courtyard in the
Biological Laboratories (Main Lec-
ture Room) on Thursdays at 4:00 PM.

- This is the forum for the presentation

of seminars by graduate students on
their thesis work, and invited sci-
entists from institutions throughout
the United States and beyond.

The MCZ Newsletter is published two or
three times a year by the Museum of
Comparative Zoology, Harvard Univer-
sity, Oxford Street, Cambridge, Mas-

sachusetts 02138; James J]. McCarthy,
Director.

Editor: Gabrielle Dundon
Photographer: A. H. Coleman

Grant Received by Invertebrate Paleontology

Department

The MCZ’s collections of inverte-
brate fossils, which consist of 250,000
lots of specimens including 10,000
type specimens, have been rated as
the fourth most significant in North
America in both size and number of
primary type specimens, according
to the 1977 Report of the Paleonto-
logical Society Ad Hoc Committee
on North American Resources in
Invertebrate Paleontology. The col-
lections are also the largest reposi-
tory of European material in this
hemisphere due to Louis Agassiz’
aggressive acquisition of European
collections in the late 1800's.

According to Dr. Peter William-
son, Assistant Professor of Geology
and Assistant Curator in Invertebrate
Paleontology, the collections, many
of which were prepared in the late

What's in a Name?

The naming of species hitherto
unknown to science provides an
opportunity to honor one’s senior
professor and ensure that his or her
name will be perpetually associated
with a group of organisms. Several
species carry the names of members
of the MCZ faculty.

When James D. Lazell, Jr., a for-
mer student and now head of The
Conservation Agency, decided to
honor his former professor Ernest
Williams in naming the lizard he
discovered on a collecting expedition

A female Anolis ernestwilliamsi

1800's, would be impossible to rep-
licate at today’s labor costs.

Thanks toa three-year grant from
the National Science Foundation, the
collections, which are housed in
15,000 drawers, will receive their
first thorough reorganization since
the 1940’s. In the intervening period,
researchers reorganized the collec-
tions of their specialty, including the
trilobites (H. B. Whittington) and the
cephalopods (Bernhard Kummel).
The first task to be completed by
Curatorial Associate Ron Eng,
assisted by Curatorial Assistant Fel-
icita d’Escrivan, is to produce a cat-
alog of the type specimens. The
eventual goal is to computerize the
entire collection, making specimens
readily accessible to researchers.

in 1980 in the British Virgin Islands,
he could not call it Anolis williamsi
since this name already existed,
named after another Williams. So he
named it Anolis ernestwilliamst.
According to graduate student
Gregory Mayer, who took part in the
expedition, “Carrot Rock, home of
Anolis ernestwilliamsi, is a tiny island,
only about 3.2 acres in size. Anolis
ernestwilliamsi is only found here
even though the island is separated
from its much larger neighboring
island by only a few hundred yards

hes '
ae 15

One of the more spectacular specimens
in the collections, a shrimp Aeger
tipularius (Schlotheim), from the
Solenhofen Limestone, Bavaria, W.
Germany (Jurassic, ca. 150 million
years old)

of shallow water. This anole is much
larger than its nearest relatives across
the water.”

Prior to the advent of Anolis
ernestwilliamsi, Professor Ernest E.
Williams actually had another spe-
cies of Anolis named after him. This
was Anolis eewi from Venezuela but
Williams himself eventually showed
that this was not a new species but
one that had been previously
described.

Carrot Rock in the British Virgin Islands, home of Anolis
ernestwilliamsi

Photos by Gregory Mayer

—T

Pere Alberch Receives Guggenheim to Study

“The Logic of Monsters”

As one of 272 artists, scholars, and
scientists chosen from among 3,717
applicants in the 62nd annual com-
petition for fellowship awards from
the John Simon Guggenheim Foun-
dation, Pere Alberch, Associate
Professor of Zoology and Associate
Curator of Herpetology, is among
those who have been recognized
“on the basis of unusually distin-
guished achievement in the past and
exceptional promise for future
accomplishment.”

Alberch plans to continue his
research on the general properties of
developmental systems and the
genesis of morphological diversity.
During the tenure of the Fellowship
he will focus on teratology—the
study of malformations—which
appear with specific relative fre-
quencies in populations. Since
monstrous forms are maladaptive
and do not survive, their regular
occurrence and organization stems
not from external functional
demands but from internal rules of
generation. An understanding of
such developmental rules allows a
definition of the realm of ‘possible
monsters.” For example, organisms
with two heads appear at low
frequencies in most species of
vertebrates; developmental rules,
however, seem to preclude the
appearance of three-headed organ-
isms, ‘impossible monsters,”’ of

Frank M. Carpenter
(Continued from p.2)

Later in our conversation Professor
Carpenter spoke to me about some
important mentors in his life in sci-
ence, especially Professor of English
Bliss Perry, whom he feels was sec-
ond only to Wheeler in his effect on
the course of his life. Perry taught a
course on the essays of Emerson. “It
met in Harvard Hall,’’ Carpenter
said, ‘“with about 50 students, with
of course 49 of them being concen-
trators in English and me the only
concentrator in science.”

He went into the first lecture with
notebook at the ready. “It ended up
that my notebook was blank at the

_
a

Three-headed Cerberus the Hellhound is an example of a biologically “impossible

monster.’’ (1826 watercolor by William Blake, an illustration for Dante’s Inferno)

which there are no well-documented
cases, to Alberch’s knowledge.

For his admittedly ambitious
project, which will result in a book
on a general theory of form, Alberch
plans to collaborate with various
colleagues in the areas of develop-
mental biology, comparative mor-
phology, mathematical modeling,
and evolutionary theory. He also
plans to investigate the intriguing
parallel between monsters that
appear in nature and those created

end of the lecture. I was so absolutely
spellbound by what he said and the
way he said it that I couldn’t take my
eyes off him! And when he left the
room after the last lecture of the
course, we all stood and applauded
for 10 minutes, and he left the build-
ing and we were still applauding.
And I decided I wanted to teach.”
And teach he has, having had 34
graduate students taking their
Ph.D.’s with him over the years. But
these formal colleagues are only a
few among countless others whom
he has encouraged during his long
career, encouraged to follow their
love of entomology even if their work
lay elsewhere. I thought of him asa
link in a long chain of colleagues in
science, of how early he received and

by the human imagination. Does the
human mind also have an internal
system of generation? Alberch will
concentrate on mythological forms,
such as centaurs and mermaids, as
well as some aspects of artistic form.
In particular, Alberch plans to study
the rules of construction used in the
work of several surrealist painters,
such as Mird, who have become well
known for the richness of their
biomorphic forms.

welcomed the gift of collegiality, and

of how generously he has passed
it on.

IMS Grant Funded

The Department of Public Pro-
grams has received a $75,000 federal
grant for general operating support
from the Institute of Museum Ser-
vices. This is the second time since
the first annual application was
submitted in 1979 that the grant has
been funded. The last time was in
1983 for the amount of $50,000.

The grant is providing support
for development and_ planning
throughout the department with a
particular emphasis on the public
exhibit program.

N

Birds-in-Art Attracts Record Crowd

The opening of the Birds-in-Art exhibit on September 4 was one of the
highlights of the three-day round of festivities in honor of Harvard’s 350th.
Over 400 MCZ Friends and their guests made this a most successful MCZ
celebration.

—
x

t - A“)
Wisk &. a
‘ ,
im > °
ee

Dr. John D. Constable, Mrs. Harold J. Coolidge and Roberta Zinman, Museum Guide
(background, right). . .

‘

Anita Ruthling Klaussen,
pening of Birds-in-Art.

Dr. James W. Wallace, and Mrs. Dorothy Wallace

Travel Program
1987

Next January’s voyage to Antarc-
tica, accompanied by MCZ Director
James J. McCarthy, is proving so
popular that the trip will be offered
again in January 1988. Members of
this year’s waiting list are already
signing up and anyone interested in
joining this spectacular cruise to see
penguins, elephant seals, glaciers,
and icebergs at the bottom of the
world should contact the Public
Programs office for details. There is
also a waiting list for our Kenya
safari, February 25—March 13,
accompanied by graduate student
Mark Skinner and Public Programs
Director Gabrielle Dundon, and a
second departure for July is being
considered as of this writing. Our
Africa) programs are becoming
so popular that we have been
approached by two private family
groups to plan their safaris. Drs. Rob
Dorit and Gillian Kendall will
accompany these groups. Our first
joint venture with the Arnold
Arboretum, with whom we have
formed the ‘Harvard Biological
Expeditions”, will be to Borneo in
August. Arboretum Director Peter
Ashton and Faculty of the MCZ
member John Constable will co-lead
this expedition which includes two
options: to visit Mark Leighton’s
orangutan study site in Kalimantan;
or to journey deep into the interior
of Sarawak by native canoe. A final
eight days in Bali and Java can be
added to the trip. A proposal to
cruise the upper Amazon aboard the
Society Explorer in October is being
discussed by the Trip Committee.
Dr. Melanie L. J. Stiassny, Assistant
Professor of Biology and Assistant
Curator of Ichthyology, would lead
this adventure.

1988

Aside from the previously-men-
tioned January Antarctica trip and a
repeat of the popular Kenya safari,
new trips are planned to Australia
in February and Papua New Guinea
in July. The Trip Committee is also
considering a natural history trip to
Yugoslavia in April and a March
cruise to the Lost Islands of the
Pacific from Easter Island to Tahiti
aboard the Society Explorer.

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